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GUEST
ARTICLE
What Do You Really Know about
Evolution?
Article description: Some years ago a few scientists
declared that the “theory of evolution” was as well established
as the rotundity of the earth. But “evolution” is still
a “theory,” not a law. All of the basics of this “theory” stand
in opposition to known science.
What do you really know
about evolution? Not much, I assure you! Dr. Colin Patterson, who was
Senior Paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural
History, delivered a speech at the American Museum of Natural
History in New York City on November 5, 1981. He began
by saying:
”...I’m speaking on two subjects,
evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it’s true to
say that I know nothing whatever about either….
“For over twenty years I had
thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One
morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night,
and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff
for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about
it….
“I tried that question on the
geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History [Chicago],
and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the
members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University
of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and
all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually
one person said: ‘Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not
to be taught in high school’” (see: Patterson).
This is a remarkably strange
statement in view of the fact that almost every evolutionist
on the globe—from the professors at Harvard to your children’s
elementary school teacher in many cases—is absolutely certain
that he/she knows virtually all of the “facts” that support
the evolutionary hypothesis. But it would be highly interesting
to hear them attempt answering some very fundamental and
specific questions.
Something
From Nothing
Here is a most interesting
problem. How does something come from nothing?
Some years ago I debated an atheist, Professor Paul O.
Ricci, in southern California on the question of the existence
of God. One of the arguments I pursued was this.
Something cannot come from
nothing. But something is. Thus, something always has been.
That “Something” that always has been is not “matter” (as
demonstrated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which
implies that matter is not eternal). Thus, there is a non-material “Something” that
always has been, that produced the “something” that now
is. The argument was further expanded, but this is sufficient
for the purpose of this article.
Mr. Ricci protested; he alleged
that something can come from nothing. I asked him
to explain how that is possible. All he could say was, “Read
the literature.” I pressed that I wanted him to
explain the process to our audience. (I was not debating “Professor
Literature,” but Mr. Ricci!) Again he repeated: “Read the
literature.” Regrettably, I was forced to point out that
the nearest thing I had ever observed of “something coming
from nothing,” was his attempt to respond to my question
as to how “something can come from nothing”! The audience
got the point and my opponent did too! If there is nothing,
there will always be nothing. Something cannot come from
nothing.
Some attempt to avoid this
question by suggesting that it is not germane to the evolutionary
issue, for evolution deals with “development”—not origin.
There has to be “origin” before there can be “development.” The
question is entirely germane, and Darwinists simply cannot
deal with it!
The
Living From The Non-Living
A second non-knowable proposition
from the evolutionary vantage point is this: How can something
non-living produce a living creature? Centuries ago scientists
demonstrated that the theory of “spontaneous generation,” i.e.,
life bursting into existence on its own, is without supporting
evidence. Francesco Redi (1626-97) and Louis Pasteur (1822-95),
through careful experimentation debunked the notion that
life can generate itself.
Even renowned Harvard evolutionist,
Dr. George G. Simpson (1902-84), familiarly known as “Mr.
Evolution,” conceded that though “most biologists think
it probable that life did originally arise from nonliving
matter by natural processes … spontaneous generation does
not occur in any known case” (1957, 261).
Sir Fred Hoyle, one of Britain’s
prominent scientists, likened the accidental creation of
life to a vast conglomerate of blind men (10 to
the 50th power, i.e., 1 followed by 50 zeros) simultaneously solving scrambled
Rubik’s cubes (1981, 521ff). This is an illustration
signifying never!
Scientists (e.g., Miller and
Fox) have been trying to create life for the past half-century,
and have failed miserably. If human intelligence cannot
create life, does it seem reasonable that raw, non-intelligent “nature” could
have done so?
The
Organized from the Disorganized
Here is another “don’t know” problem
for evolutionists. How did a highly organized, fully integrated
body with cooperating parts (and all cells are highly organized;
see Jackson, 2000, 6-14) develop from a mass of mere matter?
Rudolf Virchow (1821-1902),
a German pathologist, popularized the “cell theory,” namely
that “every cell originates from another cell like it.” Virchow
wrote that: “Where a cell exists there must have been a
pre-existing cell” (Simpson, et al. 1957. 39). Simpson
characterized this one of the “great foundations of modern
biology.” Yet none of them knows how a non-cell produced
a cell.
One evolutionist described
the cell as a “microuniverse” that abounds with discrete
pieces of life, each performing with exquisite precision” (Gore,
1976, 358). In his book on the cell, John Pfeiffer wrote
that: ”...all cells are built according to a fundamental
design which provides them with certain common features
apparently necessary to life” (1964, 10). Built? Designed?
Can there be something “built” without a “builder,” or
designed without a designer?
Paul Ricci, an evolutionist
(see above), in his book, Fundamentals of Critical Thinking,
concedes that: ”’Everything designed has a designer….” (1986,
190). His rationalization is that nothing in nature bears
the evidence of “design”; things just have “order.”
Who was the Orderer of the
order?
From “Kind” to “Kind”
The Bible teaches that God
made living organisms each after its “kind.” Recall Virchow’s
statement that: “every cell originates from another cell like
it.” The “creation-according-to-kind” principle is
stressed no fewer than ten times in Genesis 1. The Hebrew
word for “kind” (min) is a comprehensive term,
broader than the more prolific “species.” A “species” generally
is defined as a group of similar creatures that can cross
breed and produce a fertile offspring. The falcon is designated
as a “kind” in Leviticus 11:4, yet there are more than
forty species of falcons.
The term “kind” represents
segments of biological organisms that are separated by
unbridgeable gaps that no evolutionist can supply. Charles
Darwin acknowledged that this is: “the most serious objection
which can be urged against the theory” of evolution (6th
edition, 313).
It is commonly claimed that
the evidence was sketchy in Darwin’s day, but now it is
different. Wrong. There are fossils representing some 250
million species in the various museums of the world, and
the “missing links” are still missing. The evidence is
even more pronounced than in Darwin’s day.
Professor Simpson confessed
that there is a: “regular absence of transitional forms” in
the fossil record (1944, 107). The late Stephen J. Gould
of Harvard acknowledged that there exists: “precious little
in the way of intermediate forms,” and the “transitions
between major groups are characteristically abrupt” (1977,
24).
Mark Ridley, a professor of
zoology at Oxford University, wryly noted that: ”...no
real evolutionist, whether gradualist or punctuationist,
uses the fossil record as evidence in favor of the theory
of evolution as opposed to special creation” (1981, 831).
Evolution is a story of “gaps,” not “links.” Of “questions,” not “answers.”
Sources/Footnotes
Darwin, Charles. 6th edition. The
Origin of Species. London: A.L. Burt Co.
Gore, Rich. 1976. National
Geographic, September.
Gould, Stephen J. 1977. Natural
History. June/July.
Hoyle, Fred. 1981. New Scientist.
November 19.
Jackson, Wayne. 2nd Ed., 2000. The
Human Body: Accident or Design. Stockton, CA: Courier
Publications.
Patterson, Colin. See: http://www.creationdigest.com/summer2005/
Patterson_Can_You_Tell_Me_Anything_About.htm
Pfeiffer, John. 1964. The
Cell. New York. Time, Inc.
Ricci, Paul O. 1986. Fundamentals
of Critical Thinking. Lexington, MA: Ginn Press.
Ridley, Mark. 1981. “Who Doubts
Evolution?” New Scientist. Vol. 90, June 25.
Simpson, George Gaylord. 1944. Tempo
and Mood in Evolution. New York: Columbia University
Press.
Simpson, George Gaylord, Pittendrigh,
C.S. Tiffany, L.H. 1957. Life: An Introduction to Biology.
New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
--Wayne Jackson
© 2008 by Christian Courier
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